Men at Work

Bill Witherup

This collection explores the tension between public and private arenas, with the figure of the laborer juxtaposed against that of the poet. Learning to “snap a line,” in Bill Witherup’s world, is as much about manual labor as it is about writing. Witherup has created a dynamic form of poetic memoir where the personal abuts the political and elegy intermingles with vivid stories about what kills us while we are alive. The poems in Men at Work concern themselves with the survival of the world as it should be, even when faced with how the world actually is: they are tough, filled with a beautiful, sorrowful hope. Displaying black humor in one line and lyrical natural beauty in the next, Men at Work is a triumph of theme, craft, and vision that surprises the reader with every move.

A sample poem from the book

Hanford: March 1987

White crocus and purple hyacinth

In the cracked asphalt street.

Teller-light flickers in the guts

Of wild geese preening on the river bank.

Bleached gravels, dead river, white boxcars.

Doing the Storm Windows

While my birthday turkey

Sweats in the oven

I polish the house’s lens

And pray to a God I do not believe

To spare us the flash, the wind, the ice.

Once By Hanford Reach

I cupped an exploded milkweed pod—

The air so still

Seeds would not shake out;

The light in the husk

Both blinding and delicate—

Like that moment at Ground Zero

When eye-pods implode

Dark seeds of death light.